News from the Library of Congress

October 16, 2003

Armenian Ambassador Discusses His Book "British Diplomacy and the Armenian Question: 1830-1914" on October 30

Arman J. Kirakossian, ambassador of the Republic of Armenia in the United States, will discuss his book, "British Diplomacy and the Armenian Question: 1830-1914," (Gomidas Institute, 2003), at noon on Thursday, Oct. 30, in LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

The program, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the John W. Kluge Center, the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress and the Embassy of Armenia.

Kirakossian was appointed Armenian ambassador to the United States in 1999. Previously, he was Armenia’s ambassador to Greece, where he was dean of the diplomatic corps. In the early 1990s, he was first deputy foreign minister of Armenia and the acting minister of foreign affairs.

Before embarking on a diplomatic career, Kirakossian held several high-level academic positions at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. He was associate director of the Armenian Diaspora Studies Department from 1990 to 1991 and served on the Advisory Panel on Science and International Relations of the Armenian government from 1986 to 1990. He was senior fellow and later project director at the Center of Scientific Information for Social Sciences at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences from 1980 to 1986.

A native of Yerevan, Armenia, Kirakossian received a bachelor’s degree in history and geography as well as a master’s degree in history of Armenian and international diplomacy from the Armenian State Pedagogical University. In 1999 he earned a doctorate in history.

Kirakossian is the author of "The Armenian Question on the Pages of British Magazines," "English Policy Towards Western Armenia and Public Opinion in Great Britain: 1890-1900," "The Policy of England on the Armenian Question and the Spectator Weekly: 1890-1896" and many other books and academic publications.

The Library of Congress established the John W. Kluge Center in 2000 through a generous endowment from its namesake to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate, energize and distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and to interact with policymakers in the nation’s capital. The Kluge endowment also funded a million-dollar prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences, which will be awarded for the first time this fall, on Nov. 5.

The Kluge Center houses five senior Kluge Chairs (American Law and Governance, Countries and Cultures of the North, Countries and Cultures of the South, Technology and Society, and Modern Culture); other senior-level chairs (Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations, Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and Ethics, and the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology); and nearly 25 postdoctoral fellows.

For more information about fellowships, grants and programs offered by the John W. Kluge Center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4860; telephone (202) 707-3302, fax (202) 707-3595, or visit the Web at www.loc.gov/kluge. More information about the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division can be found on the Web at www.loc.gov/rr/amed/ and about the Republic of Armenia on the Web site of the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia at www.armeniaemb.org/.